A Day at the Unemployment Office

By Pat Randle

There's no place to park in the lot outside the Parma office of the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services. Cars clog the fire lane and jut out at the end of aisles, where they block the driving lanes. Other cars wander as their drivers search for an open slot or the red tail-lights indicating that an auto is about to pull out. I finally spot an open space in the firelane where another car has just pulled away. I grab it. I've checked the illegally-parked cars for tickets and seen none, so I figure the risk is worth taking. I'd probably take it even if the cars were festooned with parking tickets; fifteen minutes of crawling around the parking lot in a fruitless frustration has taken its toll. I walk into the unemployment office. A sign, handwritten in magic marker on two pieces of poster board taped together, reads "We Are Sorry for the

1940. Nationally, unemployment hit 10.8 percent. That translates into 740,000 Ohioans and over eleven million Americans out of work.

The official unemployment statistics are calculated by a nationwide survey of 110,000 households. An individual is considered "unemployed" if he or she is not working, but is actively searching for work.

The official unemployment rate does not reflect the truly poor, who are hard to locate and therefore don't get counted in most surveys. The statistics also discount people who are employed part-time rather than full-time. Finally, the official unemployment rate does not include "discouraged job seekers”— the unemployed people who have lost their jobs, but have given up looking for work. The number of discouraged workers reached 1.8 million in December, which would add close to two percent to

Reacting to Job Loss

By Nancy Segal and Pat Randle

Losing a job is devastating. When you lose your job, you lose more than just a source of income, worrisome enough in itself. Unemployment threatens your security, your identity and your feeling of selfworth. You lose the daily contact with friends in your office, and the structure that a job gives your day. Your life's turned upside down.

If you find that your first reaction to losing your job is to sleep most of the day for most of a week, don't be surprised--or upset. Like any loss, the loss of a job brings feelings of grief. And grief includes denial, anger and depression. The pain you feel isn't a sign that something's wrong with you. It's a sign that you're normal.

As important as it is to avoid denying those feelings of sadness, it's equally important not to become submerged in them. When you're no longer going to work, the structure of your day can disappear. It's up to you to provide your own structure, including time for job-hunting, spending time with friends, and engaging in activities you enjoy. Don't feel guilty about using your newly freed time to explore interests that you never got around to before. Use part of your week to volunteer in areas that intrigue you. Arts and social service organizations are in need of help in these hard economic times. By mastering new skills and doing useful work, you'll bolster your sense of self-worth. Also, by making certain commitments of your time, you're providing a superstructure that will make it easier for you to force yourself to get up and look for a job. If you're helping at the Hunger Center tomorrow, or volunteer ushering at a theater, you'll find it's harder to put off the job hunt.

Be sure to spend time with the people you like. When you're down, it often seems easier to avoid seeing your friends. But you need the social contact, particularly since you're no longer spending time with your officemates. Your sense of self-value may be strongly tied to your job, but, surprisingly, your

Delay. Slowdown Due to 90 Percent Staff Layoffs." The lines of people stretch from the counter back through the spacious office, curling around at the storefront windows.

The unemployment rate for the State of Ohio in December reached 14.5 percent, the highest since

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friends like you for who you are.

Indulge yourself. Take time out to go to the Zoo, the Art Museum or the Aquarium. Go to the library and get the books you've been planning to read. Learn how to do something you've always wanted to do. Local high schools and community centers offer a variety of classes, from ballet to auto mechanics, that are fun and reasonably priced.

And take advantage of your social contacts. The people you meet volunteering or in a photography class may be able to put you in touch with a job. That is, after all, your goal: finding a new job.

Putting off the painful business of applying for work is tempting. The daily news is a constant reminder that jobs are hard to find. And it's difficult to go out and face the potential, and unavoidable, rejection that goes with a job search.

Unemployment compensation can provide you with an illusion of safety. It's important to avoid being lulled into a false sense of security when you're receiving an unemployment check. It's money, but it's not a job. It may seem more comfortable just to live off your unemployment than to deal with the rejection inherent in looking for work. But the sooner you're looking, the more likely you are to find a job. It's hard to get hired if you haven't applied.

You may want to ask others for moral support in your job search. After a number of rejection letters it's hard to get up the energy to keep on trying. Ask a friend to keep after you to make sure you're keeping up in your job hunt. If you have other friends who are unemployed, you can start a support group among yourselves. Or try one of the unemployment support groups offered in this area (see accompanying article).

You're not responsible for your unemployment, but you are responsible for how you react to it.

Co-author Nancy Segal is coordinating an unemployment support group at Notre Dame College. See accompanying article.

the official unemployment rate.

As I work my way into the office, I see a woman I know standing in line. I walk over to her and say, "Fancy seeing you-and me-here." We exchange news and pleasantries. She explains that her company relocated to Atlanta, but she chose to stay in

Cleveland. After a while, I say I'd better go find a place in line.

"Yeah. Hope you don't have to wait too long. Really," she says. "Work hard and you'll get ahead. For sure. I worked hard for four years, right? So look where I am." She gestures at the unemployment line. "I don't know. Maybe I should have gone along. But, you know. My family's here. My friends are here. Everything's here. I don't want to live in Atlanta. I'll find something eventually. I mean, someone around here's gotta need an accounts receivable clerk, right?" She readjusts her purse. "I've got to think that, you know? What else am I going to do? You'd better get in line; you'll be here all day."

It's impossible to track down statistics on how plant and office relocations, particularly to the Sun Belt, have affected the Cleveland area, but it's obvious to the most cursory observer that the shift to the South is hitting Cleveland hard. Several Fortune 1000 concerns, including Diamond Shumrock and American Shipbuilding, have abandoned Cleveland in the past few years, taking thousands of jobs with them.

Another trend draining jobs from the area is that companies are slowly transferring jobs, rather than entire operations, to plants in the South. "They're slowly closing, whittling away a few employees a year," according to Richard Shatton of Cleveland Tomorrow. "The question is that when a company moves to increase production, where will it choose to locate the jobs? If it has a plant in Cleveland and a plant in South Carolina, and both have about 500 employees now, it's a pretty good bet that in a few years the Cleveland plant will employ 400 people and the South Carolina plant 600 or 700."

For women who are married, or who live with a lover who still has a job, relocating along with the company may not be a reasonable alternative. For others, the cost of leaving family, friends or a community in order to keep a job is too high a price to pay.

In any case, the decline in manufacturing industries and the race to the Sun Belt combine to make Ohio particularly hard-hit by the impact of the recession. And there are no signs that the economy is heading for a quick recovery.

I look for the "X" line, where my booklet tells me to report. The booklet was handed to me, along with two weekly reporting forms, when I first filed for unemployment in a storefront office seven doors from where I now stand. The booklet lists my rights and responsibilities. It includes a chart for recording my appointments at the unemployment office, and several pages where I'm to list the places where I've applied for work. The reporting slip informs me that I'm to apply for at least one job a week.

I check the forms to make sure I've filled them out correctly, then slip them into my purse. I pull out a paperback book and start to read. I've been warned that I may be waiting a long time in line and I figure the book will make the time pass more quickly.

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The unemployment rate is one thing. The number of people receiving unemployment compensation is another matter. The amount of compensation each person receives varies. Payment is determined by the amount a person earned while working. Her wag over the past year are averaged out over the number of weeks she worked. She gets about one-half her net, or take-home pay, up to a limit. The current celling is $147 a week for a person with no dependents, $223 for a person with one or two dependents, and anti yljac (continued on page " vt to dungar 94

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